Will Amazon succeed in the healthcare business?

Amazon has been relentlessly pursuing a healthcare operation for the past several years, with a pileup of failures to show for its efforts.

That was, at least, until the pandemic hit.

The global outbreak of COVID-19 was a eureka moment for the tech and ecommerce giant, which led to the more coordinated health operation the company is building out today.

That's according to four Amazon health chief medical officers who gathered together for the first time ever to speak exclusively to Yahoo Finance at the HLTH conference in Las Vegas this week.

Today, Amazon has a more coordinated health operation than in previous years, but it is still many years away from being a major disruptor in the $4 trillion industry, the CMOs said.

The story begins in 2020, when work from home, remote patient monitoring, and mail-order prescriptions saw sudden spikes in utilization and demand. It was also a time when Amazon's health efforts were still new, but struggling to find direction.

Dr. Vin Gupta, chief medical officer of Amazon Pharmacy, said the company was suddenly inundated with requests.

The seismic shift in daily life helped Amazon see what healthcare problems it could solve. With its successful last-mile infrastructure, it could quickly and easily get medical devices and prescription drugs to patients' front doors.

And with its growing cloud presence, it could find ways to not just serve doctors and health system needs, but also their customers - the patients - by offering virtual visits.

Some of the pieces that came together include the 2018 PillPack acquisition that eventually became Amazon Pharmacy; the learnings from Haven, the partnership with JP Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway, which eventually folded; and the 2019 launch of Amazon Care, delivering healthcare services for Amazon employees, which recently folded and gave way to Amazon Clinic.

The company now has a growing primary care offering with both in-person and virtual care, boosted by its USD3.9 billion acquisition of One Medical, as well as the pharmacy, which is continuously looking for ways to get medicines and health devices to patients faster and more affordably.